Short-range wireless communication capability is becoming more prominent in a wide variety of mobile digital devices, such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants, pagers and other mobile devices. By equipping such devices with requisite short-range communication readers the devices have the ability to communicate via RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), Bluetooth, Infrared (IR), Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) or other types of short-range communication dependent upon the type of reader/transceiver associated with the mobile device. Devices equipped with such readers are capable of receiving information from transponders, also referred as tags. As more and more portable digital devices become equipped with short-range wireless communication means, such as RFID and the like, the device's ability to access information and services expands.
Short-range communication tags are typically simplistic in design; including an integrated circuit that incorporates the associated short-range communication circuitry and sufficient memory to store the information that will be communicated to the transponder. While conventional tags, such as those embodied in a card or key fob format, include memory which is read-only and permanent in nature, future tags may be configured with dynamic updateable memory that allows for the content of the tag to be frequently updated or revised.
As previously noted, short-range communication, such as RFID and the like, provides users the unique advantage of accessing additional information about a product, service or the like. For example, if a tag is attached to merchandise at a retail store and a shopper is equipped with a tag reader, the shopper may read the tag and be provided with additional information about the product, such as specification, consumer reports, pricing information and the like. If the reading device has adequate storage capacity, the user can store the information for future purposes. As such, short-range communication provides the capability to provide users with a limitless amount of information.
One service that up to now has not benefited from exchange of additional information via short-range communication is broadcast services, such as radio broadcasts and television broadcasts. While, Radio Data System (RDS) has recently become a commercially viable means of transmitting broadcast content, such as television and radio signals, along with other types of informational content, RDS is limited to providing the additional information in conventional formats, such as by display of the information or audio transmissions of the information. RDS does not provide a means whereby the additional information may be readily captured and, possibly, stored by the user.
RDS is made possible by transmitting the informational content on alternative frequencies. For example, automobiles equipped with RDS receivers are able to receive RDS broadcast signals and, in addition to being provided the audio signal, are provided information about the program (i.e., program title, song title, artist and the like), which is displayed on an associated alpha-numeric display. The ability to provide both the broadcast and the information content, seemingly simultaneously, is made possible by PLL (Phase Locked Loop) tuner technology that permits a broadcast receiver to be retuned within milliseconds. During this re-tune process the audio or visual signal is muted, which because of the short time is usually not detected by the eyes or ears. Thus, the broadcast receiver is able to choose the transmitter frequency, among a number of alternatives, thus providing the best quality reception and the informational content. In addition to program service information the additional information may include but is not limited to, travel/traffic information, weather information, time/calendar information and the like.
Thus a need exists to develop systems, devices and corresponding methods and computer programs for providing broadcast content in combination with other informational content. The desired system should benefit from the user being able to capture and store the information without having to remember the information or otherwise provide inputs (keystrokes and the like) to the capturing device. The desired system should provide for systems, devices, etc. that allow for a user to capture and store information quickly and efficiently, while listening to or viewing broadcast content. In addition the desired systems and devices may provide for user to capture and store only the information that user has previously designated as being user-preferred information.